Battle of Wasatch
The Battle of Wasatch was a battle during the Flettan Rebellion of 1106 between rebels under Xethos Stamnoudus and Tuscaloosan militia under Alexander Jacobellis. It took place on 11-12 March 1107 Prelude On 22 October 1106, reactionary Xethos Stamnoudus ignited the rebellion by commandeering a column of levy crossbowmen and executing their commanders. The levies were conscripted from the five provinces comprising Esk Ridge and Greenville. Stamnoudus had aided the training of the Anglin Eyland levies and used his sway over them and the unpopularity of R15 Franklin Vincent to quickly establish his authority over the levies and organized them into five regiments. His sister, Xena, and Abby Schlosser had trained a separate task force of 350 female troops, ignoring Vincent's ban on arming them. Stamnoudus moved this force to winter in the ghost town of Wolfsville, hampered by a lack of supplies. This, he converted into a large fort and began drilling his force as best he could while trying to establish contact with the SRB, led by Natalia Sytnikov and rustle up enough supplies to maintain his troops. Meanwhile, to the east, Sytnikov had already gotten word of the rebellion in the north and mobilized her force. Much more willing than Stamnoudus or any of Vincent's commanders, she began to perform hit-and-run strikes against lightly defended military outposts controlled by Vincent as well as looting villages loyal to the maix est regine'im. Vincentian forces offered little resistance. Farther east still, Dave DeGrenier and Greg West had kept their retinues from the Drubyetski-Sceafaricenian War of 1095 and maintained their oppositionism and popularity. Because Vincent rarely left the capital, the Appalachian region had a fair amount of autonomy and DeGrenier and West were left unchecked to rile up the populace. Despite both being Drubyetskian, they each managed to scrounge up larger armies of about 40,000 each by the spring. Though they did not march until after spring, the mere threat kept Vincentian forces pinned and allowed Sytnikov to run rampant. By February, Vincent decided he had to consolidate his forces to challenge the rebels. Four rebel armies had appeared in fairly short order, and he saw no way to predict if more would spawn. Stamnoudus, receiving word from Sytnikov, began to march his army south east to try to better coordinate with Sytnikov until the larger two armies were able to unite with them. DeGrenier, while he still lacked the supplies or logistics to fight a campaign, rode personally to meet with Stamnoudus, where he told Stamnoudus to act as marshal of the campaign since he had no political baggage and was the only man in the land who could get away with giving orders to Sytnikov. While Sytnikov was more active, DeGrenier was still the most influential opposition leader on the continent, and since he wanted Stamnoudus to lead, Stamnoudus led. Stamnoudus immediately sent orders for West and DeGrenier to plug two of the northern passes while he took the more active Wasatch Pass. Though his force was the smallest by far, he was already close to being in position and had the supplies to sustain a fight. He'd also secured the services of expert surgeon Lyla Lehr and believed that his army would be the least likely to lose soldiers permanently. In early March, Tuscaloosan general Alexander Jacobellis was the first to act upon his orders to consolidate the Vincentian armies in the Fletta. Commanding levies from a couple of Tuscaloosan provinces, he marched straight to the Wasatch Pass, intending to acquire supplies at one of the crossroad towns on the other side of the pass. Armies Jacobellis's army was comprised exclusively of Tuscaloosan nationals, mostly from western provinces and numbered roughly 52,000. Because Vincent's cavalry came from Thunder Bay and his artillery came from the Fletta and from Ingenitopia, the Tuscaloosan and Sceafaricenian levies were expected to provide only infantry. While Tuscaloosa had some heavy infantry and ranged infantry, Jacobellis had only mid-tier sword infantry and light spearmen, split about half-and-half. His greatest shortcoming, however, was the absence of officers and NCOs. This was not an army meant to fight on its own, and Jacobellis did not expect to fight without some reinforcement. Stamnoudus, meanwhile, had nothing in the way of armour, and with the absence of cavalry, he did not have any spears on hand at all. He had on hand 25,985 crossbowmen. While he'd had three months to train them in sword combat, they were first-and-foremost crossbowmen. Their advantage was that they had drilled extensively in volley firing and were fast at reloading. Superior discipline to the Tuscaloosan levies was their greatest hope of victory. Crucially, he had a number of capable if inexperienced officers to aid him in the way of Tom Woolf, Scott Schlosser, Dan Anglin and Clay Guzalak. Ambush On 11 March, scouts for Stamnoudus reported the approach of Jacobellis's column. Though not enthralled by the idea of fighting two-to-one odds, Stamnoudus felt he needed to hack away at the numbers of Vincent's army and this was about the easiest battle he was going to get. Still, not fancying the odds, he sent out three regiments to lay ambushes, covering all three of the routes though the pass and split a fourth regiment to add to the size of each ambush. The following day, at roughly 8:00, Jacobellis walked right into one of the ambushes. As soon as the front of the column reached the last couple of Stamnoudus's files in the pass, the rebels opened fire. The sudden deaths of hundreds of levy soldiers from 6,000 bolts proved to be too great a morale shock for the conscripts, some of whom froze while the rest turned and ran. Four more volleys were fired before Jacobellis had his entire force out of the pass and into safety. More than 2,500 Tuscaloosans lay dead or wounded without inflicting a single casualty on the rebels. Jacobellis, while in a state of shock, was able to rally his forces quickly enough to forced march southward and make his camp near a much wider route that Stamnoudus would not be able to properly ambush. Stamnoudus thuse had to withdraw his troops from the passes to prepare for a more open field fight. Though the ambush had not even up the numerical odds, Stamnoudus was confident that Jacobellis's army would be shaken from the experience. Hoping to exploit that, Stamnoudus gave two of his regiments to Tom Woolf to flank Jacobellis's force. Since this weakened his main line, he set his remaining regiments to fortifying a position on the southern valley with his flank protected by a lake, which lasted well into the night. Battle Deployment Jacobellis did not arrive to the battlefield until 19:00 as a result of his march, giving Stamnoudus plenty of time to plan his formation. As he did not have the force to completely block off the pass, his left flank was left wide open. In an attempt to minimize the effect, he deployed his three regiments, totalling just over 15,000 troops into two ranks, showing Jacobellis a massive spaghetti line. Only his sister's shieldmaidens were held in reserve, partly because most of them were Estocada duellists who were not likely to fare well against the Tuscaloosan charges and partly because they were the only troops he'd grouped into a small enough unit to provide a reserve without hampering his main line. Jacobellis had no such problems. He put his 30,000 spearmen into a number of deep phalanxes directly across from Stamnoudus's spaghetti line, effectively using them as hoplites, and set 10,000 swordsmen in a column to walk around Stamnoudus's flank. The remaining swords, he kept in reserve with himself. Jacobellis's Advance While the phalanx was sure to destroy Stamnoudus's archers in melee, Jacobellis significantly underestimated the firepower Stamnoudus possessed. Once the phalanx had closed to within 200 metres, Stamnoudus's first line opened up a volley. Jacobellis's phalanxes suddenly were forced to slow to a crawl as soldiers attempted to navigate their way around the fallen men in the front line. Fifteen seconds later, the second line fired and the process was repeated, each volley making time for more volleys to hit. Meanwhile, Stamnoudus's left flank was still threatened by Jacobellis's swordsmen. In a desperate attempt to slow them down, he reluctantly committed his miniscule reserve force, giving their command to Abby Schlosser; his sister, he kept nearby, though she was perhaps more qualified to lead. Though they could also fire volleys, the swordsmen were not at all constrained by formations and continued to make more speedy progress. Woolf's Attack Having failed completely to reconnoitre the area before engaging, Jacobellis had no idea that there were more rebels directly behind him. At 19:30, Woolf sprung his attack, firing a pointblank volley at Jacobellis's reserve's rear and then charging. At about the same time, Jacobellis's hoplites reached the sandbags that made up Stamnoudus's fortifications. However, the flanking swordsmen were suddenly needed in two locations. Jacobellis immediately sent an order upon being attacked withdrawing this flanking force and turning it toward Woolf. Stamnoudus picked up on this quickly and sent Xena to swing the shieldmaidens around the flank of the hoplites to fire into the blob of phalanxes. With Jacobellis preoccupied and no middle command, the spearmen were utterly incapable of dealing with the situation. While his first line struggled in melee, Stamnoudus kept his second line firing into the melee at will, which the Tuscaloosans had no answer to. In the rear, Woolf had routed the reserve swordsmen and split his own force in half. Scott Schlosser was given the task of occupying what was originally the flanking force while Woolf fired into the rear of the phalanxes. The spearmen, having no way to protect themselves from one direction of fire, let alone three, began to break. Jacobellis had no hope of rallying them without abandoning his sword infantry, which was wavering against the barrage of fire from Schlosser's regiment. Seeing a few troops start to flee, Stamnoudus sent the shieldmaidens forward into melee on the flank. As more spears lifted or were dropped, he ordered his main line to surge forward and the slaughter began. Woolf continued to shoot until he thought the battle was over, but Stamnoudus gave him a charge signal. Nonplussed, he ordered the charge and between the two sandwiching forces, thousands of routing rebels were slaughtered. Meanwhile, Schlosser's regiment had shot down Jacobellis and were firing into the backs of the routing swordsmen, who ended up running towards the meat grinder that was Stamnoudus's regiments. Aftermath Tactically, the battle was a decisive victory for the rebels. All told, 43,000 of Jacobellis's column fell on the battlefield and in the pass and the remaining 8,000 were completely shattered and leaderless. The rebellion, on the other hand, only suffered 450 serious casualties (85 dead and 365 severely wounded). Lyla Lehr's skill in surgery and organization is credited with keeping the death count relatively low. Strategically, the battle was not significant. Vincent's army had been conscripted past the million man mark and the loss of Jacobellis and his troops were not a large dent in his forces. However, the battle still sent out shock waves across the continent. Stamnoudus was still fairly unknown outside of the few rebel leaders and his own troops; rankers in West's or DeGrenier's army had not heard his name until after Wasatch. After the battle, Stamnoudus sent three copies of the same message to his fellow leaders, "Killed some militia today and their general." This drew congratulations from DeGrenier and West and the famous response from Sytnikov, "What are you doing? This is my crusade." The battle would force Vincent's columns to march together as Stamnoudus had demonstrated that the rebellion was capable of taking out large targets just as well as Sytnikov had taken out so many smaller targets. This would set up the much larger and more significant Battle of Mojave. Soon after the battle, Stamnoudus began to draw some ire over inflicting an 83% casualty rate, particularly given the unsteady nature of the levy troops' morale. It soon spread that Stamnoudus had not accepted a single surrender and had chased down routing enemies, which was not well received. Nonetheless, it was the first major rebel victory and most leaders were willing to let it slide